Author: David Jacobi

I am a writer, photographer and artist. This blog will be a running commentary on country living, gardening, cooking, history, people, folklore, writing, reading, art, flora and fauna, photography, music, movies, traveling and whatever else I might be pondering off the back porch.

2021 Reading

Once again I kept track of all my reading for a year. The reading goal for 2021 was pretty much the same as for 2020, to make my way through the large library of unread books I have accumulated over the years. There were just a few books I started and decided not to finish, but all the rest made it on the list. My nine favorites are in bold.

One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding By Robert Glover

Narrative of My Captivity among the Sioux Indians By Fanny Kelly

One Man’s Meat By E.B. White

Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph By Doon Arbus

The Bridge of San Luis Rey By Thornton Wilder

The World Without Us By Alan Weisman

The Magic Never Ends By John Ryan Duncan

Natural Cures They Don’t Want You To Know About By Kevin Trudeau

The World of the American Indian By National Geographic Society

The First Century By William K. Klingaman

Hermann Hesse Poems Translated By James Wright

The Greatest Presidential Stories Never Told By Rick Beyer

The Greatest Stories Never Told By Rick Beyer

Six Short Masterpieces By Tolstoy Translated By Margaret Wettlin

Schott’s Original Miscellany By Ben Schott

American Scripture By Pauline Maier

We Pointed Them North By “Teddy Blue” Abbott and Helena Huntington Smith

Twilight at Monticello: The Final Years of Thomas Jefferson By Alan Pell Crawford

Historical Viewpoints, Notable Articles from American Heritage, John A. Garraty, Editor Vol. 1 to 1877, 4th Ed.

The Road To Wellville By T. Coraghessan Boyle

365 Four-Star Videos By Leslie Hamilton

An E.B. White Reader Edited By Watt and Bradford

Best Known Works Of Robert Louis Stevenson

From Mexican Days to the Gold Rush By Marshall and Buffum

The Walking Drum By Louis L’Amour

One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich By Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Telling Writing By Ken Macrorie

Folklore Myths And Legends Of Britain By Reader’s Digest

The Rockefellers By Peter Collier and David Horowitz

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter By Carson McCullers

Any Survivors? By Martin Freud

Selected Tales And sketches By Nathaniel Hawthorne

Soldier’s Pay By William Faulkner

Two Storms

Our big pine tree the day after the latest winter storm

In the middle of December we were warned of a big rain storm coming our way from the west, and checking radar online we saw a vicious looking red streak sawing across the state, with us right in the way. That gave us plenty of time to prepare, with the accompanying long term dread of what might happen. Later we could see it coming off to the west, maybe 20 or more miles away, with big dark clouds and plenty of lighting. As it approached the streaking lightening fired up along with the strobe lighting, the tornado sirens began blaring and the wind was gusting at over 80 miles per hour. The rain was coming horizontally and dirt and debris were flying all around. We took the dogs to the basement and stayed there until the all clear, about 20 minutes later. The next couple of days revealed how close we came to a tornado, as about 15 miles to our east along Hwy 169 there were scattered parts of grains bins, out buildings, trees and some houses.

About a month later, in mid-January, the next winter storm hit us with snow this time, around 12 inches according to the local weather report, but it looked like around 6 inches to us. Plenty of 3 foot high drifts, though, after the 30 plus mph winds kicked in. The old John Deere 420 (with a snow thrower mounted on the front) fired up and took care of the mess again. Maybe this snow will help a little with the now two year old drought we have been experiencing. There were big cracks in the yard before this latest storm. I am not rooting for more snow, more like hoping for a rainy spring.

The Other Half

At the start of 2021 I decided to keep track of what shows, documentaries and movies I watched for an entire year, and this list is the total for the other half of 2021, from July through the end of December. The first half of the list can be found here.

The Tomorrow War (2021)

The Road To Wellville (1994)

Ball of Fire (1941)

Nobody (2021)

Centurion (2010)

His Girl Friday (1940)

Stella Dallas (1937)

J.R. “Bob” Dobbs and the Church of the Sub Genius (2020)

Big Love – Entire Series

Goliath – Entire Series

Paycheck (2003)

Every Breath You Take (2021)

600 Miles (2016)

The Way of the Gun (2000)

Sweet Girl (2021)

A Night in Casablanca (1946)

The Book of Eli (2010)

May It Last: A Portrait of The Avett Brothers (2017)

Stevenson Lost and Found (2019)

Hindenburg: The New Evidence (2021)

Marley (2012)

Son of a Gun (2015)

Phantom (2013)

The Girl With All the Gifts (2017)

Gangs Of New York (2002)

Highlander (1986)

Misery (1990)

City Slickers (1991)

Death Race 2000 (1975)

Homeboy (1988)

Bad Reputation (2019)

Love, Gilda (2019)

The Paperboy (2012)

Days of Heaven (1978)

The Transfiguration (2017)

LBJ (2018)

Splinter (2008)

A Quiet Place (2018)

A Quiet Place 2 (2021)

Lady You Shot Me: Life And Death Of Sam Cooke (2019)

Tideland (2006)

Leave No Trace (2016)

The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

Hud (1963)

Captain Fantastic (2016)

I’m Not There (2007)

The Greasy Strangler (2016) (One of the weirdest movies I have seen)

The Mystery of Picasso (1956)

Harry Chapin: When in Doubt, Do Something (2020)

High-Rise (2016)

Blood on Her Name (2019)

Ham Balls

Ham Balls

This delicious recipe came to us from Shelly’s Aunt Shirley. We have made it both with and without the sauce, and have used brown gravy instead of the sauce in the recipe. A note on the recipe card says “Shirley divided in half – made plenty.”

Ingredients:

2 ½ lbs ground pork (Shirley used ground beef instead)

3 ½ lbs ground ham

1 cup bread crumbs

¼ cup dry milk

4 eggs

1 ¾ cups water

Instructions:

Mix all ingredients. Shape into balls and brown in 400 degree oven for 20 to 30 minutes on a baking sheet. Transfer to a clean, greased 9 X 13 inch pan. Pour sauce over balls and bake at 325 for 30 minutes covered.

Sauce:

1 ¾ cup tomato juice

1/3 cup vinegar

1 ½ cup brown sugar

¾ tablespoon mustard

Mix all ingredients well.

Greg

Good Friends By David Jacobi

A meeting of children

Could have been forgotten

But we continued

Pen Pals

You to Missouri

Then back to Iowa

We played and

Became best friends

Jumping on my bed

Listening to Beatles

We both wanted to be John

I was Paul

And so the summers went

Playing soldiers

And Planet of the Apes

Times in the tree house

I don’t know

If we could have been

More wonderful

And complete

2021 By David Jacobi

Read!

“Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.”

William Faulkner

Travel Log: 1998 Pine Lake, Part Two

Our kids in canoe at Pine Lake State Park 1998

Part One of this travel log can be read here.

July 21 – (Shelly writing) Lounged until 10:00 am, then kids and I went into town for a few supplies (we thought we should stock up on beer before RAGBRAI showed up) then back to the cabin. David made his famous scrambled eggs with all the leftovers (wonderful!) I did clean up then we all piled back into the car to go back to Eldora to do fun things. David went checking out a few stores while the kids and I went to BJ’s Video. We played pinball and pool. Their favorite game was Motorcycle Derby – they actually sat on a plastic motorcycle and leaned left and right to curve it and turned the throttle to speed up and pulled the brake to stop. We had agreed David would come back to us in 40 minutes. When he came back the kids and I went to Ahoy Fountain while David explored a few more stores. The Fountain was great, Jacob had his first real banana split (he ate the whole thing) Sarah had a single dip cone and I had an old fashion yummy root beer float. The whole town was gearing up for RAGBRAI – extra supplies and help. We came back to the cabin, Jacob roller bladed, Sarah explored, David and I read and relaxed. David took the kids down to the creek and I continued to relax and read. It was great weather today, cloudy and cool. We turned off the AC and opened the windows in the cabin. After the kids and David came back from the creek they showered and had supper. We all relaxed, read then played a game of Monopoly. We are looking forward to tomorrow – we go fishing!

July 22 – We all slept in (again!) then ate and to the beach. Too hot for me, so I came back to the cabin and relaxed for a while. I decided to try fishing the Iowa River (one snag, several bites, no fish) After two hours at the beach Shelly and the kids came back and wanted to fish too. We packed up and walked over to Lower Pine Lake. Sarah caught three fish, Jacob two and Shelly and I had no luck. After about an hour and running out of worms we decided to try the river. We restocked at the cabin and tried a new spot on the river, where the spillway stream from Lower Pine Lake meets the Iowa River. In the shallow of the stream just before it empties into the Iowa there was a lazy school of at least 300 fish. Everyone was very excited and began casting right into the fish – who, of course, were not interested at all. After about an hour of actually hitting the fish with our casting and them ignoring it we decided to head back to the cabin. The kids ate, then Shelly, then they were in bed reading for the night. Time for me to get some grub and join them.

Continued Next Month